


all in, how could i not be

by orphan_account



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Enthusiastic Consent, Established Relationship, Fantasizing, Intercrural Sex, Love, M/M, Porn with Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-19
Updated: 2016-07-19
Packaged: 2018-07-25 11:03:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7530166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack's gaze is not exactly heavy, but something deep, powerful, focused, like a spotlight. It has weight, as if it nearly has force itself, and it creates sensation in his gut that’s not part of physical reality but is somehow still absolute in its existence. It makes Eric aware of all his vulnerabilities, but he doesn’t feel judged. He feels soothed, caressed. He feels some way he isn’t used to yet, like its suddenly possible for him to feel vulnerable without also feeling afraid.</p>
            </blockquote>





	all in, how could i not be

The kegster has gotten crowded enough for Eric to disappear by 10pm, so naturally he is already halfway up the stairs. Ideally, he’ll be inside his room before anyone thinks to notice he’s gone. Eric knows that Jack, still downstairs and probably cornered by a tadpole, will wait exactly 10 minutes then take his first opportunity to come up to Eric’s room. Eric fishes the key out of his pocket. _Jack would leave the party, probably discarding a barely-touched pilsner on whatever flat surface, step up, up, up the stairs, walk down the hall, open the door to Eric’s room, lock it behind him, double-check it, and finally he’d turn around where he’d find Eric_ _…_

Eric twists his key in the lock, steps into his room, closing the door behind him. He leans back against it heavily. The music from the party is muffled up here, but not by much. It doesn't matter because finally Jack is here. They need this. They are always trying their best to see each other but schedules tend to be busy and mandatory for both of them and its been about a month since Eric was able to ride the train up to Providence. The longing aches deep in his chest. It comes and goes while he’s in practice, or in class, or being harassed by Ransom and Holster but when he’s alone it’s unavoidable, dominates everything he feels inside. It’s a feeling that goes deeper than the width of his body, like some fluke of physics has ripped a tear in space-time in order to hold between his ribs the enormity of Jack’s absence. He understands. They’ve discussed it countless times, and they’ve even gotten to the point where he and Jack can talk about missing each other without Jack apologizing. He still gets this guilty look around his eyes but it’s progress all the same.

But Jack doesn’t have practice until tomorrow afternoon, so he was able to drive up to Samwell, catch the last half of their game, make an appearance at the kegster celebrating Samwell’s win against Boston College. Shitty couldn’t leave Cambridge, which is sad but also means Eric was able to weasel his way out of his kegstands and escape the party, unnoticed but with an excuse about setting up the air mattress for Jack on his floor before he got too drunk. Which he needs to do anyway to keep up appearances. The idea of Jack downstairs waiting until he can come upstairs and kiss him is unbearable. He wants to ask Jack to break his ten-minute rule. He’s so, so close, even closer than across the country on a roadie, even closer than TD Garden in Boston, even closer than 40-something miles from the Haus to Jack’s apartment, but Eric still can’t give him more than a hug which involved an embarrassingly awkward pat on the back. Part of him wants to scream in frustration and part of him wants to cry and throw a fit about the injustice of it all. He does neither. He closes his eyes. He thinks about something else.

_Jack would walk through the door. He’d turn around and find Eric, still dressed, because Jack loves undressing him, sitting cross-legged on his bed, leaning against the windowsill, pinning the closed curtains behind him against the window. Jack would just look at him for a few moments._ Eric knows because Jack always does. His gaze is not exactly heavy, but something deep, powerful, focused, like a spotlight. It has weight, as if it nearly has force itself, and it creates a sensation in his gut that’s not part of physical reality but is somehow still absolute in its existence. It makes Eric aware of all his vulnerabilities, but he doesn’t feel judged. He feels soothed, caressed. He feels some way he isn’t used to yet, like its suddenly possible for him to feel vulnerable without also feeling afraid. He trusts Jack like he’s never trusted anyone, like he had always feared he’d never be able to, and that makes him brave, honest. He doesn’t have to perform for Jack. What they’ve made is not theater.

_Then Jack would walk over to the bed,_ he thinks. Eric walks over to the bed, takes up the position floating around in this daydream, back pressed up against the curtains. _Well, first Jack would check the lock one last time. Then maybe he’d take his shirt off, or maybe his jeans too, or maybe he’d just strip. Hmm, maybe he’d strip, but he’s Jack, so it would be quick and efficient like in the locker room. Then he’d walk over here and unwrap Eric like a present and gasp sweetly at all the bare skin he’d revealed._

_Jack would just hold him for a while, lying huge and warm over Eric’s crossed legs, skin to skin, nuzzling his face into Eric’s side, humming, pleased, almost like a cat’s purr. Then Eric would lean down, press a kiss into the top of his head. Raise his chin and kiss him on the mouth because he’s missed that a lot. He’s missed a lot of things._

Eric’s mind provides several graphic imaginings, sharp and clear and in saturated color. He lets his head roll back against the window. _Eric sitting on the edge of the bed, feet resting on the floor, pants unzipped but still around his thighs. Jack on his bare knees, hands caressing up and down Eric’s hips and waist with Eric’s cock in his throat, looking right up into Eric’s eyes through his eyelashes, locking him in place._

_Eric naked, bent over the bed, face in the covers, hands sprawled above his head, Jack draped over his back, kissing his neck. Jack’s hands trapped between his chest and the bedding, Jack’s fingers dragging and tugging over his nipples, Jack’s erection not inside but pressing right up against him. Eric twisting his hips, arching his back. Both of them teasing each other._

_Eric on his back, Jack riding him, fucking himself with Eric’s cock all slicked up with lube slipping, dragging in and out of him. Eric’s hands resting in the creases where Jack’s thighs meet his groin, feeling all that powerful muscle shifting him up and down. Jack finding the perfect angle and depth, grinding there with Eric, inside him, rubbing into his prostate again and again, and shaking and shaking and whining and his cock dripping come onto Eric’s stomach._

Eric adjusts himself in his jeans. He wants Jack. He _wants_ him. He wants him right now. He hears a floorboard creak in the hallway.

Jack quietly opens the door, steps inside. The click and grind of the latch slipping into place is barely audible behind the pop song pulsing through the floor from the party below. Eric wants Jack all pressed up against him soon, but right now he just wants to plant a kiss on Jack’s pretty smile. Jack turns the lock and looks at him and it’s even better than in Eric’s daydream. Jack, timid as he is, has a presence about him that fills up the room, or maybe its that they are so synced up that Eric could find him in a crowd just by whatever influence pulls him to Jack like a flower turns to the sun.

Sometimes now-Eric, Bitty, gets thoughts from fourteen-year-old Eric. That version of him is surrounded by people, all alone in Georgia, one slip-up away from watching his skin split and let a swirl of pungent red blood out into shark-infested water. Fourteen-year-old Eric is showering thoroughly just before bed on school nights so he doesn’t walk into class smelling like cinnamon. Fourteen-year-old Eric is ducking his head, walking home from Madison High as fast as he can without drawing attention to himself, forgoing his music so he can hear if someone sneaks up on him from behind. Fourteen-year-old Eric is writing notes in class into the lined sheets of a black cover notebook, in conscious blocky print and never in his natural flowing scrawl. Fourteen-year-old Eric doesn’t know what other people might notice and use to puncture his flesh. Young Eric is so terrified of being torn apart that he treats each sweet and soft part of him like a knife, like something dangerous.

Sometimes Bitty gets thoughts from that Eric, like _is this real?_ even though, yes, it is real, _we’ve been over this_ , less than a year ago in fact, in the cab of Coach’s pickup truck, hiding from the mosquitos on the fourth of July. He’d probably asked “really?” to half the things Jack said that night.

Those thoughts from young-Eric don’t stand a chance when Jack is right in front of him. He’s always catching Jack looking at him like he’s something miraculous and rare and precious in his beauty, like he’s in awe of all the tiny choices and accidents that had to occur for his existence to even become a possibility.

“Please come here, Jack,” Eric pleads, impatient. He feels restless, like he’s going to vibrate his body apart if he doesn’t get some part of him against some part of Jack. He’s missed the flattering stare but he’s craving a warm, huge hug. The side of Jack’s mouth tugs up like he wants to laugh at him, but he obeys, clambering up onto the bed on his hands and knees. Eric can almost feel his body heat before he even gets close. Jack crawls up over him and presses a kiss into the corner of Eric’s mouth, topples onto him and rolls them over to the side so they can lay face to face, heads sharing Eric's pillow.

Eric grins, lets a long breath out of his mouth that turns shaky, thinks _Lord, Bittle_ because he’s definitely about to cry. He plants his hands on Jack’s chest, feels Jack’s heart beat steady under his palms. Jack is so solid and so delicate. Eric loves the defined edge of Jack’s jaw, the sharp line of his nose, the way his high cheekbones wrap around the sides of his face. He loves the deep set of Jack’s huge blue eyes, the thick feather of his eyebrows, the way his hair wants to curl but just isn’t long enough. He loves the folds of Jack’s ears, the soft baby hairs at the hairline down on his neck. Eric loves the way Jack looks at him but sometimes he just wants to look at Jack.

He does end up crying but he thinks its probably reasonable considering that the dream of a boyfriend who he thought he’d never get is right here in front of him. After being apart from him for almost five weeks. “Baby, I missed you,” he says thickly, and he thinks _I love him_ and he remembers _he loves me too_ , and _we’re in love_ and a fat tear slips through his eyelashes, wanders down his cheek.

Jack smiles and kisses that tear away but when he pulls back his eyes are round and wet and his voice is tight when he says, “I missed you, too, Bits.” Jack puts a big hand at his jaw and kisses him gently.

Eric runs his hands up into Jack’s hair, rubbing and scratching over his scalp, and Jack’s arms move to circle around his waist and drag Eric snug up against him. Eric presses their lips together more firmly and then Jack is shifting the angle and kissing and kissing him closed mouthed, just trying to nuzzle up against him thoroughly. Jack is somehow shy and ferocious, built and heavy and gentle and kind. Thoughtful and clueless. Sometimes he wants to be playful and sometimes he just wants Eric’s hands to stroke all over his skin. Eric smiles up against his mouth because Jack reminds him of panther – huge and dangerous but still just a housecat scaled up in size.

Eric rolls over on top of him.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” he whispers. “How was your day, honey?”

Jack sucks a deep breath in through his nose up against Eric’s cheek. “It was fine, the usual,” he answers. “I was a little distracted. I couldn’t stop thinking about this. Being here with you.”

It’s a very normal thing for Jack to say, and he feels a little guilty, but the tiny and scared part of Eric lights up at the knowledge that Jack thinks about _him_ while he’s supposed to be training, _while he’s supposed to be being an NHL player!_ Jack’s finally achieved his dream and all eyes are on him, and still, he’s thinking about Eric. He does feel bad, but they’ve had this conversation before too, and he fills in the memory of what Jack said back then to quiet the worried voice in his head.

_“I’ve been thinking… that… maybe that it’s good for me not to be thinking about hockey all the time. Because thinking about you makes me feel happy. And thinking about hockey makes me feel… lots of other things. Not always good things,”_ Jack had stumbled, trying to find the right words. In getting to know Jack, Eric has learned that Jack is quiet not because he has nothing to say, but because he feels so loudly and overwhelmingly, thinks ideas that are too big and complex and nebulous to ever be written or said, experiences the world so intensely that for the most part all he can do is hold on and experience it. _“Maybe it’s not… distraction, but sometimes I remember that hockey isn’t all I have anymore. I have you. I get to play hockey and I get to be yours.”_

Eric preens, shifts on Jack’s chest, entwines his legs with Jack’s, looks at Jack through his thick, blonde eyelashes. “I was thinking about you, too, baby,” he murmurs, meets Jack’s eyes. “I was thinking about you right before you walked in here.” He adjusts so Jack can feel where he’s still half hard in his jeans.

He watches Jack’s eyes darken, watches his pupils stretch and try to see more, take in more of the light bouncing off every visible part of Eric. “Yeah?” Jack sighs, squeezing his arms at Eric’s waist. He’s so warm and so strong, and he’s wearing that ridiculous sweater again, the one with the tiny zipper at the collar, and Eric loves him _so much_.

“Yeah. But it’s OK if you’re too tired,” Eric hums. “I could just show you instead.”

Jack’s smile stretches into a grin, his teeth all in a neat row, sharp, clean, twinkling in the gleam from the fairy lights above Eric’s bed. Eric wants to taste them, wants close his mouth over Jack’s pretty upper lip, wants to run his tongue over the roof of Jack’s mouth. Jack is such a good kisser because he kisses the way he wants to be kissed, and Eric wants to give him everything he wants. He does nothing but wait for Jack to reply. Jack has to have noticed the way he’s staring at his mouth.

“I’m not too tired,” he says, “but if there’s something you want to show me, then I want to see it.” Eric watches Jack’s lips purse and stretch around the words, and his heart sings and warbles in his chest. Jack is constantly saying these perfect, romantic things that make his guts feel like vanilla custard inside. Eric kisses him sweet and thick and slow like syrup, tongues at Jack’s lower teeth, sucks Jack’s lip just barely into his mouth and gives it a gentle suck so when he pulls away, Jack’s mouth is pink and tender and his eyes are all soft and glazed over like the icing on the lemon loaf cake that he baked earlier ‘for the party’ but really to use up some of his excited energy.

Eric plants one more kiss at the corner of Jack’s mouth and rolls over so he’s laying on his back on top of Jack, adjusts so Jack can hook his chin over Eric’s shoulder and see. A heavy bass line vibrates through the air from downstairs. Jack’s quick heavy breaths ruffle the tiny hairs on his neck, and he feels himself start to sweat with Jack’s body heat all along his back. Eric unzips and shrugs off his hoodie, then peels away his shirt too. Jack starts kissing his neck and runs his hands up Eric’s arms to rest on his shoulders like he’s trying not to touch and it tingles everywhere, every nerve in Eric waking up, eager to see what Jack will do next.

Jack starts to kiss up behind his ear, at his jaw, but he turns his head to watch at the sound of Eric dragging down his zipper. Jack’s hands come down to grip at his waist and when Eric wiggles his jeans down his thighs and reveals his erection, trapped in his red briefs. Jack makes a breathy little sound in Eric’s ear. It feels like that noise flips a switch because his restlessness isn’t pacified anymore, he needs to move, he needs to feel friction on his skin, even if its just the texture of Jack’s clothes. He squirms, arches his back against Jack’s front, moves one hand back, up into Jack’s hair, slides the other down his own body to palm the front of his briefs where his cock has leaked and left a wet spot.

“What were you thinking about? Before?” Jack asks, voice low, and Eric feels it rumble against his back.

“You, sweetheart,” he breathes, “and what was gonna happen when you came up here.” His dick twitches against his hand through the cotton at the ideas he had for them.

“Tell me,” Jack pleads, hands grabbing at Eric’s waist, kissing at Eric’s shoulder, watching him. _He’s watching me,_ Eric worries, and then _he’s watching me,_ hot and thick in his mind, trapping him in warm, sticky mist. _He’s watching me,_ Eric thinks, and slides his briefs down around his thighs to meet his jeans.

Jack starts sucking and kissing at the place where Eric’s neck meets his shoulder and it feels really nice but Eric wants him to watch now. He tightens his grip on Jack’s hair, uses it to tilt Jack’s head so he’s looking, and Jack makes a pleased sound in his throat. With his other hand Eric grips the base of his cock and pulls up, says, “First I was thinkin’ about you sucking me off,” and a glob of precome oozes onto his belly.

Jack moans and rocks his hips up against Eric, who plants his feet on the bed so he can grind back down on him with purpose. “Then I was thinking…” he trails off, sliding his hand out of Jack’s hair and guiding Jack’s fingers up to a nipple. Jack rubs one thumb over the peak and Eric feels every ridge of Jack’s thumbprint tingle through him. He feels powerful, desirable, like there’s something mystical about him that Jack can’t resist. Maybe there is.

He smears the precome off his belly, uses it to lubricate his hand over his own cock, fast enough to get worked up and stay there, not fast enough to come. “I was thinking about you teasing me,” he continues.

Jack’s other hand rises to pinch and twist at his other nipple and a moan gets caught in Eric’s throat. He squeezes firmly at the base of his dick, feeling the blood trap there, feeling heat fold and coil in his groin. He rocks down against Jack, the hard bulge in his jeans grinding right up against the cleft of Eric’s ass. _Yes,_ he thinks, _yes,_ because he wants to make Jack feel good all the time and he’s barely even touched him but the proof that touching himself makes Jack this hard… _Yes._

“And I thought about you riding me,” he manages, and Jack groans, head rolling back and then forward again like he doesn’t want to miss anything. “And I was holding your hips,” Eric rocks his ass down against Jack, starts moving his hand on his dick again, slides his other hand back into Jack’s hair, just gripping and holding him just how Jack likes him to, “and you were making yourself feel so good,” he strokes himself slower but tighter, breath coming fast, and a sense of urgency thrums just under his skin, “and making yourself come on my cock,” he whimpers, voice all strangled, and Jack’s huge, warm hands are feeling him all over, grabbing at his hips and waist and thighs, dick rocking up against him, groaning against his shoulder. He wants to come but he wants Jack to come even more.

Eric sits up, says, “Here, please, between my thighs, Jack,” and fumbles for the bottle of lube in his nightstand while Jack wrestles with his jeans behind him. Eric settles back on Jack’s front, parts his legs so he can slip down and smear a handful of lube over Jack’s dick. Jack lets out a sharp little _ah_ at the cold or at the first touch to his bare skin, Eric isn’t sure. “This is OK, honey?” he asks.

“ _Ouais,_ yes, yes,” Jack says hurriedly, and plants hot, wet kisses up Eric’s shoulder, his neck, the ridge of his jaw. Eric closes his thighs around Jack’s erection just as Jack sucks his earlobe into his burning mouth. It makes his whole body feel hot and feverish and his blood _whoosh_ in his ears. He lets out a quiet noise he can’t hear behind the music and his own body and Jack’s breath on the side of his face.

Eric knows they’re making a huge mess, but he’s so turned on that he can’t worry about that right now. The length of Jack’s body is pressed up against his back and every flex and shift of Jack’s muscles makes his thighs quake. Eric crosses one ankle over the other, trying to keep the warm clasp of his legs pressed tight around Jack. The arousal in his groin feels like a pot ready to boil over, but there’s something behind that, something warm, lighter than air in his chest, something that wants, but not for him. It’s familiar by now, but still powerful. It’s the part of him that will always want for Jack, long for Jack, belong to Jack. It’s the part of him that’s always going to love Jack regardless of circumstance or divide or tragedy.

Jack is nosing up behind his ear and breathing in deep, smelling him, like he wants to catalogue Eric’s scent away to carry with him in his lungs even when there’s space between them and it makes the hot, bright ball of light inside him rise from the butterfly of his ribs at the base of his sternum up, up into his throat and he wants to cry out because he’s so happy, because he loves Jack so much and that pure white light turns to fire when Jack shifts his hips. Jack must be feeling it too, because he’s spreading his hands all over Eric’s skin, petting him, saying with effort, “I love you—Bits—baby, I love you,” as if he must say something but the words he has aren’t enough. There must be something leaking out of Eric at the quantum level, a thick, sweet, puffy cloud of pure emotion, or maybe it’s leaking out of Jack and touching him, filling up the space between quarks with something ethereal and liquid. Eric hears Jack’s words and he knows as well as Jack does that they aren’t quite right; they aren’t deep and endless, infinite, eternal, breaking the very laws of physics, piercing the veil of reality like this feeling is. The words aren’t perfect but they’re as close as they can get.

Eric melts into the cloud of feeling, colored like the sunset, navy and gold and coral and lilac. His body is nestled into Jack’s, but he doesn’t feel like he’s inside his body, he feels like he’s floating, cradled by the vivid nebula they’ve created together. It’s inherently human, but it feels divine, too flawless and unbreakable to have originated on Earth. He turns his head and murmurs against Jack’s temple, “I love you, Jack,” he catches Jack’s hands with his, “I just want you, honey,” their left hands slide up to the front of Eric’s neck, not choking, just resting heavily at his clavicle, feeling his pulse, Eric trusting, Jack being trusted, “I just want to be here with you,” he says, and guides their other hands together to reach for his erection.

Eric tries to ground himself in this moment, grips himself at the base with the ring of his thumb and two fingers, Jack’s huge palm and calloused fingers sliding and caressing over the length of him, Jack’s hips rocking up against him. The lube is getting tacky, lower on Eric’s thighs, but their body heat keeps it wet in the part of Eric’s ass, the stretch of his perineum, the root of his scrotum where Jack is sliding, pressing up against him. Jack isn’t inside him but there’s something similar in the sensation of his flesh parting for Jack, creating space for him without resistance, without command from his brain, like each of his cells wants the chance to touch Jack, desperate for whatever Jack will give. Each slip of Jack’s cock rushes, trickles right up his spinal cord to his brain, tingles down into each of his limbs, pools thickly in his groin.

Eric can feel every crease and bump of Jack’s hands on him. The pressure and heat of Jack’s palm at his collar is comforting, like his heart can’t beat out of his chest because Jack is holding it in from the outside. Jack’s grip on his dick is just perfect, his pace too, coaxing open each nerve and receptor in his skin so they can be overwhelmed with hot, oozing sensation. The muscles in his neck are screaming and his head rolls back, reveals the point of his throat, which buzzes with each _oh_ that escapes his mouth on Jack’s upstroke. His hips hitch up into Jack’s grip restlessly, heart pounding and pounding against his sternum, skin flushed while pristine, immaculate pleasure twists up inside him, fluttering out into each of his limbs, making his toes curl and his fingers twitch. The contrast of Jack’s body heat all up his backside and the cool air along his front just keys him up more, makes his skin more sensitive.

Jack is releasing a noise on each breath, with each movement of his hips, and it makes a shudder run down Eric’s scalp from the top of his head, each hair on his body standing upright and each nerve lit up, begging to be strummed like the strings of a guitar. He squirms down on Jack’s cock, pressing even closer against him, meeting Jack’s hips with the curve of his ass, and then rocking up into Jack’s tight fist each time he retreats. He’s still holding the base of his dick and it’s enough that the head is turning even more dark and rosy; the gentle squeeze Jack gives at the sensitive tip bursts through him. Jack does it again, and again, and the sensation builds, more and more intense, jolting through his cock and the muscles in his groin, climbing up his spine, emptying his brain of thought.

The sight of the wet head of his erection disappearing into Jack’s fist is an indulgence, rich and luscious but not heavy enough to weigh down that airy feeling in his chest, sweet, opulent like dark chocolate mousse. He’s shaking all over, more forcefully with each pass, feet trying to fold around each other at the ankle, trying to keep a grip around Jack’s cock despite his spasming muscles. Eric is crying out now with each stoke and Jack puts more slick pressure at his tip each time, his brain whites out, he has to close his eyes, he’s so, so close. “Jack,” he whines, “Jack--” He’s just about to come, so close it aches and burns, all the muscles in his pelvis and thighs tightened up in anticipation, skin buzzing and singing. He finally releases his grip at the base of his flushed erection and he stays right there on the edge for several long, jerking, shuddering, twitching moments before his orgasm is bursting, flashing up his spine, aching in each of his limbs, burning ecstasy pouring into him like lava, and at the very peak of it, Jack moves his hand from Eric’s clavicle and pulls at his nipple and the wail he can’t hold in is drowned out by cheering and shouting twenty feet below them.

His come is streaked up his chest and still dripping onto his belly and each slick press against his perineum from the head of Jack’s cock is shocking through him, and Jack’s hand is shaking with effort but he hasn’t stopped moving over Eric’s sensitized dick because he knows Eric likes it, that he likes to drag out the peak of his orgasm. His body jerks mindlessly with pleasure, all the muscles in his pelvis and abdomen rippling with it, and Jack is still fucking up against him, and Eric whines, begs Jack to come, too.

“Please, come, please,” he cries, all in a rush of breath, “I want you to feel so good, Jack--”

Jack slips his hand off Eric’s tired cock and clutches at him, fucks his hips up, nuzzles his face into the side of Eric’s neck, makes several gorgeous moans into his skin, and his muscles clench and seize, and his come pulses out of him and smears into the crevices of Eric’s body. Jack stills and pants, gasps, and once he relaxes, Eric rolls over on top of him so they’re finally face to face again, because that’s what Jack needs in these moments, needs to see him, needs to know he’s not alone, that Eric is floating with him among a trillion motes of feeling, suspended above reality in bliss.

“You’re so perfect, honey, I love you,” Eric tells him, panting, exhausted, body flooding with endorphins, lazily kisses Jack all over his cheeks and his forehead, “You’re so good, baby,” and he laughs out a sigh when he wonders, “how is it so good every time?”

Jack’s breath still heaves and he can’t quite speak but he smiles, revealing his pretty white teeth and gazes at Eric like there’s not a thing in existence that could pull his eyes away. Jack still pants but Eric shakily raises himself up onto his elbows, arms on either side of Jack’s head, presses a kiss to the corner of his open mouth, feels Jack’s breath on his cheek. He pulls back but stays in Jack’s space, lets Jack narrow down his world to just Eric and ignore the noise and the stress and the secret they have to keep even from the people they trust.

Eric can be a chatterbox but Jack has taught him how to enjoy a silence, how to sit in a moment of peace and let the stillness still his own busy mind. He’s learned that he is allowed to be both happy and flawed, that he can fall apart and still be whole, that his cracks and wounds don’t preclude him from holding something delicate without breaking it. He doesn’t have to be perfect to have something perfect. Neither of them have to.

“I love you, too, Bits,” Jack rasps, and Eric, flushed and smeared with lube and come, giggles and giggles and loves him deeply and remembers he’s forgotten to inflate the air mattress.


End file.
